The India legend's brief spell wearing the White Rose ushered in a new era at Headingley and kept a huge talent grounded
Sachin Tendulkar was back at Wimbledon at the weekend, acknowledging the crowd's applause in the Royal Box for the fourth year in succession. A boyhood tennis nut, who idolised John McEnroe, India's great batsman spoke afterwards about his hour-long post-match summit with Roger Federer. "What a humble guy!" the Little Master said, immediately pinpointing the supreme quality that impresses him most.
It is the same one that has defined his own 23-year career, a humility in excelsis that has allowed him to weather an unparalleled level of scrutiny and adulation and still seem the unpretentiously modest child prodigy who scored his maiden first-class century at the age of 15.
It was never more apparent than in 1992 when, to much fanfare, he became Yorkshire's first overseas signing after Geoffrey Boycott and the club's cricket committee finally dismantled the Broad Acres-born policy that had, with a few breaches that were brushed under the carpet, prevailed for more than 70 years.
In the late 1970s and 80s, Yorkshire's civil war waged by pro and anti-Boycott factions had left the club thoroughly demoralised, impoverished and moribund both on and off the field. The odd cherished twitch on the thread – winning the John Player League under the captaincy of a 51-year-old Ray Illingworth in 1983 and victory in the Benson and Hedges Cup final at Lord's four years later – papered over the cracks. But the once-dominant county had been usurped in the championship by the new powerhouses of Essex and Middlesex.
Once Boycott's committee had voted, by a margin of 18 to one, to break with the past, they put Australia's Dean Jones on standby, then bowing to the wishes of the captain, Martyn Moxon, signed up a fast bowler instead, Jones's compatriot Craig McDermott. Due to make his debut on Good Friday, McDermott telephoned his new employers a month before his scheduled arrival and pulled out with a groin injury, provoking much spluttering at Headingley.
A year earlier Fred Trueman had called the decision to recruit an overseas player "a bloody disgrace" and the revolutionaries were forced on to the back foot by McDermott's withdrawal. They reacted to the crisis with a masterstroke, using the Bradford League veteran and Dewsbury businessman Solly Adam, who had recruited India's Vinod Kambli to play for Spen Victoria, to approach Kambli's schoolmate Tendulkar to fill the void.
After a week's thought he agreed and flew in for practice, posing for photographs with a flat cap barely containing his curls and holding up a pint of beer, which made him the most incongruous Tetley Bitterman to date.
At the age of 19 he had scored three Test centuries, including a brilliant one at Old Trafford in 1990 when Eddie Hemmings grassed a straightforward caught-and-bowled chance to give him a life, and a sparkling counter-attacking carnival of square cuts on a blood-curdlingly fast track at Perth in 1992.
His maturity had long since marked him out and he quickly acclimatised to the Yorkshire dressing room. After only a few weeks the coach, Steve Oldham, said: "They are all better players for his presence. His confidence is infectious, they all want to bat with him." Fifteen hundred new members joined the club, the same number of McDermott mugs the Yorkshire shop had to send to landfill, and though the attempt of a few wags on the Western Terrace to nickname him "Seth" didn't catch on, Tendulkar was relished during his time with the club.
He asked for his name to be removed from his sponsored car after attracting too much attention but he was largely left alone on his days off, heading off to Blackpool pleasure beach to ride the Big One time and again and enjoying his first experience of eating fish and chips out of newspaper.
In 16 championship games he scored 1,070 runs, demonstrating his formidable blend of exquisite timing, judgment, improvisation and an eye the Australians likened to that of a dead fish. He scored only one century, at Chester-le-Street, but was caught short in the 80s three times and the 90s twice. It didn't make much difference to the club's fortunes on the field as they finished 16th in the table a month after he had left to join up with India.
But a decade later, when he was inducted as one of five great Yorkshire players, Tendulkar said: "I will always remember this as one of the greatest four and a half months I've spent in my life."
Results do not tell the whole story. For many of us who dreamed of wearing the White Rose and failed to make the grade, Tendulkar's spell at the club and the more tolerant era he helped to usher in made frustrated ambitions easier to bear. In 2002 he scored 193 for India at Headingley as England were demolished by an innings to give the Yorkshire public the century they had craved 10 years earlier – and no Tyke begrudged him. After all, he's one of us.
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